


nevermore

by emmerrr



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Halloween, M/M, Meet-Cute, Neighbors, ghostly vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 14:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21273032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmerrr/pseuds/emmerrr
Summary: It's typical that Adam would end up living next door to a ghost





	nevermore

**Author's Note:**

> written for a very excellent halloween prompt on tumblr which was: adam moving into a new apartment and hearing weird noises at night but in the end it's just his neighbor's pet raven.

Adam’s been living in the apartment for a week and a half when he first hears it.

Tapping. Scratching. Nails on hard floors, or _something._

He turns the light on and sees nothing, and soon enough the sounds stop. Adam’s a rational person; no doubt there’s an explanation for whatever it was. He goes back to sleep, and thinks no more about it.

Work keeps him busy. It’s long days made even longer when he brings work home with him as well. He often works through mealtimes, one hand for shovelling food into his mouth, the other free to type away on his laptop.

He sleeps like the dead every night, gone as soon as his head hits the pillow, not rousing until his alarm shrieks at him far too early in the morning. But it’s a routine, somewhat comforting despite the tedious nature of it.

Adam has always been good at work.

A whole week goes by before he wakes again in the middle of the night, parched and desperate for a drink of water.

He sits up in bed. The moonlight is shining in through a gap in the curtains, giving his bedroom an eerie glow. And he hears that strange scratching again, just faintly, but definitely there.

Adam has a horrifying thought that someone (or some_thing) _is tapping on his window. Squashing down the knowledge that investigating strange sounds in horror movies is always a precursor to a gruesome death, Adam silently slips out of bed and goes to have a look.

Because there’s a rational explanation for this, and he’s a rational person.

He cautiously peers around the curtains, and when he doesn’t see anything glaringly obvious to be alarmed about, opens them completely.

There’s nothing there; nothing out of the ordinary anyway. Just the same tree that’s on the sidewalk outside his building, a streetlamp, a view of the road and the buildings opposite.

But _still, _he can hear something, and he knows it’s not just in his head. He shuts the curtains again and goes to the kitchen for water, walking quietly and keeping an eye out for the source of the sound.

He can’t hear it at all from the kitchen, but when he goes back to his bedroom, he hears it again. It isn’t constant, but just as Adam thinks it’s finally stopped, it starts up again.

Only being able to hear out of one ear, he struggles to pinpoint where it’s coming from. Whilst at first he thought it was coming from his own apartment, and more specifically his bedroom, now he’s not so sure. He presses his good ear up against his bedroom wall — a shared wall with next door — and after listening for a while, he’s fairly certain that’s the source of the strange noise.

That’s one mystery over at least, but Adam still doesn’t know what it _is._ He’s never seen anyone go in or out of that apartment since he’s been living there, and up until now had thought it was empty.

Cautious curiosity takes over, and he pulls on a hoodie and goes out into the hallway. He knocks on the door to the neighbouring apartment, but there’s no answer. When he goes back to his own place, the noises have stopped.

It’s ages until Adam falls into a restless sleep.

He tries and fails not to think about it the next day, but even though he’s specifically listening out for it that night, nothing happens. And it goes like this for the next couple of weeks; sometimes he hears it, sometimes he doesn’t. He’s no closer to figuring out what it is, and he’s increasingly starting to think it’s something ghostly.

Well, at least it’s not _his _apartment that’s haunted. He just wishes he wasn’t in such close proximity.

The worst thing is that sometimes, amongst all the tapping and scratching, Adam thinks he can hear singing. He can never figure out what the song is — it’s always far too faint — but there’s something melancholy about it.

Lovely, but sad.

He goes round and knocks on the door another couple of times, but there’s never any answer, and he still hasn’t seen anyone go in or out. It really is absolutely typical that he’d end up living next door to a ghost.

One morning, whilst leaving the building to go to work, Adam walks past a raven perched on the back of a bench on the sidewalk. It’s staring at him, head cocked to the side. Adam nods as he passes, politely says, “Hello,” then wonders if he’s going mad. After a few more steps he turns back. The raven is gone.

He hopes he’s not now hallucinating on top of everything else, but who knows?

Fall is in full swing by now, the temperatures dropping and golden leaves littering the streets. Halloween decorations are out in abundance, and someone has put a motion-detecting witch at the entrance to the apartment building. It cackles and its eyes glow whenever someone walks past. It makes Adam jump every. Single. Time. Because that’s exactly what he needs right now; spooky imagery and jump scares literally everywhere he goes.

However, the miraculous happens. Adam gets a blissful full week of absolute silence from the apartment next door. He starts to catch back up on sleep, starts to wonder if he was imagining it all along.

And then the night before Halloween, it’s back again, on and off all night, that same scratching and tapping and indistinguishable singing or whatever it is.

He goes to work the following day on next to no sleep and more than one of his coworkers suggest he’s come dressed as a zombie for Halloween on account of the huge dark shadows under his eyes. He certainly _feels _like a zombie as he walks home, and when that witch decoration lets out its shrieking laugh when he walks past, he’s so out of it that he jumps about a foot into the air.

Behind him, he hears a snort, and he peers over his shoulder.

A man he’s never seen before is walking up the steps, black jeans, black leather jacket, black boots, shaved head. He doesn’t even flinch when he sets the witch off himself. There’s a smirk on his face that isn’t a bad look, but it annoys Adam anyway. 

Adam rolls his eyes and makes for the elevator, too tired to take the stairs. The stranger gets in too, and Adam presses the button for the third floor. He steps back so the man can press whichever floor button he needs, but he makes no move to do so. He must be visiting someone then; funny, Adam thought he’d met everyone who lived on his floor, with the obvious exception of his ghost next door.

The elevator pings and Adam steps out and takes a left towards his apartment. The stranger’s footsteps are loud and close behind him, and Adam speeds up just a little. The only people who live down this way are him and the elderly couple who live opposite. But the footsteps keep on coming.

Adam stops sharp and whirls around. “Are you following me?” he demands.

The newcomer raises an eyebrow, a mixture between amused and confused.

“No?” he says, phrasing it like a question. Adam doesn’t carry on, so the man walks around him, giving him a wide berth.

He passesAdam’s apartment, pulling keys out of his pocket, and then he unlocks the apartment next door.

The ghost apartment.

Adam hurries to catch up, his body and mouth reacting faster than his brain can.

He catches the stranger’s arm just before he disappears inside.

“You _live _here?”

“Hey, watch the jacket, man, it’s vintage,” the guy says, pulling his arm out of Adam’s grip. “And yes, I live here. Got the keys, don’t I?”

“Did you like…_just _move in?” Adam’s semi-aware that he probably sounds crazy, but he’s too tired to care, and _so_ close to solving this mystery.

“Nah, I’ve been here like two years. Are you okay, man? Who _are _you anyway?”

“I’m Adam, I live next door, and this is going to sound really weird but is your place haunted or something? Because I swear, I’m losing my mind.” It all comes out in a rush. Not the best way to meet your neighbour, Adam thinks.

“Okay, well I’m Ronan, and I can’t say I’ve ever had any run-ins with ghosts while I’ve lived here.” He narrows his eyes. “Why?”

Adam deflates. He really didn’t want to think it was all in his head. “I just…I heard some stuff. Never mind, I didn’t mean to bother you. Sorry.”

He turns to go, but this time Ronan catches _his _arm, albeit gently. “What did you hear?”

There’s something knowing about his expression that sets Adam a little bit at ease. It makes him feel a little less ridiculous. “I don’t know what it was exactly. Scratches, tapping, that sort of thing. The only thing I could figure out was that it was coming from your apartment. Also…singing. Sometimes.”

“Ah,” Ronan says, and he steps back over the threshold of his apartment, jerking his head for Adam to follow. He does, and when they’re inside, Ronan gestures into the living area and says, “Is it her?”

Adam peers past Ronan, and standing on the floor and staring up at him is a raven. The same raven, Adam would wager, that he saw outside a few weeks earlier.

She hops towards them, and her feet scratch at the hard floor when she moves. With context, Adam now recognises it as the same sound he’s been hearing through the walls.

He turns to Ronan. “You have a pet raven.” This somehow makes perfect sense.

“Her name is Chainsaw.” Ronan holds his arm out to her, and she flaps her wings as she jumps up. He dips a little as he catches her, and Adam reasons she must be fairly heavy. Not your average budgie.

“Have you been tormenting the neighbours again, turd?” Ronan says, and he sounds proud. It makes Adam smile; he’s feeling generous now that he knows what’s been keeping him up at night.

“Are you never home or something?” he asks Ronan. “I’ve come around and knocked on the door _so _many times. I thought this place was empty.”

“I mean, I’m not _always _home,” Ronan says with a shrug. “And Chainsaw comes and goes, but if she’s here then I’m here.”

“Then why didn’t you answer the door?”

Ronan picks up a pair of expensive looking headphones off the coffee table. “I have these on like ninety-five percent of the time. I probably didn’t hear the door.”

Something suddenly occurs to Adam. “Hold up, can Chainsaw _sing?”_

Ronan rubs a hand over the short bristles of his hair and looks skyward. There’s just a hint of a blush dusting across his cheeks. “Uh, that would be me you heard. Probably. Unless there really _is _a ghost in here that sings when I’m not around.”

Adam shakes his head, helplessly endeared by the revelation that his scarily attractive, slightly mean looking neighbour not only has a pet raven but also sings sad songs in the middle of the night. This is someone he wants to get to know. And Adam isn’t always interested in getting to know a lot of people.

“I can’t believe I’ve been living next door to you and a raven all this time and I didn’t even realise. If you’d brought me a welcome basket like all the other neighbours when I moved in, I could have saved myself a lot of sleepless nights.”

Ronan grimaces. “I don’t really do all the neighbourly shit,” he says. “And to be fair, I didn’t even know I _had _a new neighbour.” He grins, and it’s a good look. “So hi, welcome to the neighbourhood.”

Adam can’t help it; he laughs. “Jackass.”

Ronan puts Chainsaw down, then gives Adam a considered look. “You look like you could use a pick-me-up,” he says. “I was just gonna head back out and get some food, you wanna come?”

As if on cue, Adam’s stomach rumbles. He’s exhausted, but he could really do with something to eat. And he has a feeling he’s going to sleep like a rock tonight.

“C’mon,” Ronan’s saying, as Adam has taken too long to answer. “Consider it an apology for making you think the place was haunted.”

Ronan’s hot. Adam’s hungry. It’s a no-brainer. “Well, it’s the least you can do,” he says with a drawn out sigh.

Ronan grins, all teeth. 

“That’s the spirit.”


End file.
